New Member

I am sure a lot of you sold picture online or at photo stock website.
I would like to ask, what is your biggest challenges when trying to sell photo(fashion) on photo stock website?
Is the royalty fee a problem for you guys?
How many pictures do you upload to photo stock website a month and do you make a good profit out of it?

guys thank you and I appreciate a lot if you guys could spend a few minutes and help me out with my question...

Moderator

fashion, or even bikini, lingerie, nude has limited uses in stock photos.

more popular and sought after subjects people in isolated background, in business, medical, consumers, lifestyle theme, but bear in mind there are billions of similar photos out there, it is very competitive in stock photography.

I don't understand what do you mean by "royalty fee a problem for you guys"? please elaborate.

anyway, you are competing with many full time stock shooters upload hundreds or more images each months, as a new comer, you will need to spend a few years working very hard to see some results.

New Member

fashion, or even bikini, lingerie, nude has limited uses in stock photos.

more popular and sought after subjects people in isolated background, in business, medical, consumers, lifestyle theme, but bear in mind there are billions of similar photos out there, it is very competitive in stock photography.

I don't understand what do you mean by "royalty fee a problem for you guys"? please elaborate.

anyway, you are competing with many full time stock shooters upload hundreds or more images each months, as a new comer, you will need to spend a few years working very hard to see some results.

New Member

Plus you may have a copyright issue - if it is high fashion, the fashion house has a copyright on the design. Selling a picture of that will have copyright issues. It is similar to taking a picture of artwork.

The biggest issue is that there is little market for stock images of fashion. Understand the industry before you try to change the game. Fashion images that are cutting edge normal have a shelf life of 6 months to a year - fashion trends change rapidly and what is cutting edge today will look old and dowdy in due course.

Senior Member

Plus you may have a copyright issue - if it is high fashion, the fashion house has a copyright on the design. Selling a picture of that will have copyright issues. It is similar to taking a picture of artwork.

The biggest issue is that there is little market for stock images of fashion. Understand the industry before you try to change the game. Fashion images that are cutting edge normal have a shelf life of 6 months to a year - fashion trends change rapidly and what is cutting edge today will look old and dowdy in due course.

I do not see as a problem when the royalty fee only 20%, it is a fair game, when your images are more popular and sought after, you will earn a higher rate of royalty, beside, micro stocks image is a number game, you want to earn more, shoot more and upload more, simple as that.

you need to look at the rejection of photos submission positively,

for technical issue.... simply put it, the quality may not up to par,

for copyrights issue.... no photo buyers will want to risk themself, so no sale.

for no market potential issue.... very low or no sale, means not profitable,

every single photos you upload has a cost, (time or money)
soon or later you will know is not worth to upload photos has no potential of sales.

the agancies are helping you to make your photos more saleable, you make money, they will make money too.

and thank you for your offer, but I'm exclusive with istockphoto, not allowed to sell my photos in any other areas. (except under rights managed licence or commissioned assignments)

New Member

Guys thank you a lot for you opinions. I will need to do more market research on my project.

@catchlights
(except under rights managed licence or commissioned assignments)
is that mean you can sell a same picture at istock and other website like shutterstock , fotolia etc? If I created a new website like istock, is that mean you are allow to sell it on my new website?
Are you able to sell your own pictures at your own website/blog while those pictures are also available at istock?

I am so sorry I am just new with photography copyright and would be nice if you could help me.

to all other my senior @nedy77,@sjackal,@ellery @JacePhoto, thank you so much for the valuable opinion

Moderator

I can't sign with other agencies and sell my photos thru them.
even some photos hosting sites which able to let other people download images, either I disable the feature or I don't place any of my photos there
My photos/video which are in istockphotos, it is exclusively with them, not available anywhere else.

I can sell my other photos/video which are not in istockphoto under rights managed licence at my site, I can accept commissioned assignments.

and to sell photos under rights managed licence, is far too complicated, and I don't have the time to manage it, and it won't justify my efforts for doing so.

one more thing,

in any business, the right way is find out the market desire first, than design a product to fulfil their needs, not the other way round.

New Member

I can't sign with other agencies and sell my photos thru them.
even some photos hosting sites which able to let other people download images, either I disable the feature or I don't place any of my photos there
My photos/video which are in istockphotos, it is exclusively with them, not available anywhere else.

I can sell my other photos/video which are not in istockphoto under rights managed licence at my site, I can accept commissioned assignments.

and to sell photos under rights managed licence, is far too complicated, and I don't have the time to manage it, and it won't justify my efforts for doing so.

one more thing,

in any business, the right way is find out the market desire first, than design a product to fulfil their needs, not the other way round.

This is totally correct. I consider my project could solve my problem as a photographer but I am not sure in other photographer point of view.
I fully respect everybody here and never mean to advertise but if anyone especially catchlights, wanted to know more about my project and could give me some information about my project, it would be really really kind.

anyway thank again for the insight and I am doing my brain storming now....

@respected member and catchlights, please do not mind if I write to your PM and will ask your opinion later day about my web project....

Member

It is good to see that you are doing your homework before you plunge into setting up a stock images website.

Please pardon me if I am wrong . I suppose the main reason that drives you to setup this stock images website that focus on fashion images is that you love to take photos, maybe to be exact - so called fashion images . You try to sell it to stock agency but they decline it.

If you think a step further, why would the stock agency rejects the photos? It can be due the quality of the images or most important, whether there is a demand for the images. The big stock agencies have do their market research well and they know exactly what kind of images the customer are looking for. So if you are trying to sell something on your own site that is rejected by them, it is probably not a smart move.

As for having photographers to sell their images on your website, there are many things you need to work on ... the copyright of the images, the payment terms etc. It is easy to think that the return of 20% and lower is very little from stock agency, so why not you do your own sales or invite other photographers to join your stock site and give them higher return (30% or even 50%). But then you will realize that you need invest and put in a lot of effort to maintain and advertise you site in order for people to find you.

It may sounds attractive for the photographers to join you, they will be excited and upload images for you sell but eventually if the traffic is slow and sales are low, they will realize their effort and time of uploading the images is not worthwhile.

In short, setting up a website to sell stock images is not impossible but you must be prepared to invest and put in continuous effort to maintain it. You may only see the results in months if not after a few years or running.

Senior Member

A simple "reserch" which you can do is to take a look at the terms and condition of sales from other stock agencies, assume that you use the same T&Cs, would you be able to manage your business under such terms and conditions, do you have the resources to monitor unauthorised usage, presue the matter, etc in order to protect the rights of your photographer?

Senior Member

You also need to think about how much you have to pour in to advertise and market your webby to get any notice.

I would think for any stock webby will need millions of dollars to hit it off internationally.

The commission may seems small from those stock library, but it doesn't mean that they took a clean profit of 70-80%. If everything run smoothly, if they can have a clean profit of 30% is very respectable.

A new product to get known, typically you need to spend between $800K to $1m before making any respectable return for an establish company. At least this is how much I lean to have one product to penetrate the market when I was in corporate world.

For example, when coca cola is trying to create coke zero... That is probably how much they need to spend so it is noticed.

This is a basic business number game.

A successful business is more then just have a nice website and good content. There are a lot of little nitty gritty that makes a business work.

Senior Member

The key to your website is advertising, not getting photographers interested. No sustainable advertising plan, no take off. Even if you are not planning to take it internationally, and just cater to photographers in the region, you need to have a large budget to get your branding out in the market, and stay there. Legal costs are no less daunting - to ensure your T&Cs are catered to your market and protect you from being an easy target of litigation.

You may aim to start small and make your project grow as you gain more experience, but please make sure you don't lose big. Get enough capital, get yourself out there, and make sure your T&Cs are tight.